The Korea Herald

[Leonid Bershidsky] How to protect Interpol

The election of South Korean Kim Jong-yang as president of Interpol put an end to fears that the global police cooperation organization would fall under the control of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the controversy surrounding the election lays bare a more important issue: How does one keep international organizations inclusive without leaving them open to abuse?Last week, the Times of London named Russian police general Alexander Prokopchuk the front-runner in the Interpol election made

Nov. 25, 2018

[David Ignatius] A Thanksgiving wish: Slow it down

Here‘s a simple four-word wish for Thanksgiving 2018 -- a day when most of us take a break from the blurring, dizzying speed of our internet world: Let’s slow things down.I don‘t just mean stopping to smell the roses, or taking a hike in the woods, or hiding our screens for a few hours. I mean, literally: Slow down the circuits. Put more friction in the system. Make social media slower, more local and less instantly connected to people we don’t know. Our hyper-fast world has become destructive.

Nov. 22, 2018

[David Ignatius] A Thanksgiving wish: Slow it down

[Timothy L. O’Brien] Ivanka’s email scandal has a familiar moral

Ivanka Trump used her personal email account last year to handle as many as 100 discussions of official White House matters. If that doesn’t strike you as a rather ironic turn of events then fine-tune your antennae by looking up any old online video of her father threatening to put Hillary Clinton in jail for using a private email server, calling on Russian hackers to find her missing emails, or praising the FBI for reopening an investigation of the former secretary of state’s “criminal and ille

Nov. 22, 2018

[Hal Brands] America’s secret weapon against China: Democracy

In his speech at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit over the weekend, Vice President Mike Pence put the clash of political values between the US and China at the heart of the clash of geopolitical interests between the two countries. Pence declared that America seeks a “free Indo-Pacific” where countries and individuals can “exercise their God-given liberties”; he touted Washington‘s progress in deepening its relationships with the region’s democracies. Pence contrasted this approach w

Nov. 22, 2018

[Hal Brands] America’s secret weapon against China: Democracy

[Richard McGregor] Xi ignored private enterprise. Now he needs it

After more than five years in power, Xi Jinping has constructed a singular political persona: of a leader who places the Communist Party and its authority above all, on top of the state, the economy and military.So it may have come as a surprise to see Xi usher China’s top entrepreneurs into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People earlier this month to offer them reassuring bromides about their importance for the country’s economy. “All private companies and private entrepreneurs should feel totally

Nov. 22, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Germany doesn’t really want an EU army

For all the recent debate about creating a joint European army, Germany -- which has the second-biggest military in the European Union -- has little interest in setting up any kind of supranational force under the EU’s command. This reluctance is key to understanding the ineffectiveness of all the bloc’s existing military projects.In a recent op-ed for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen laid out her vision of “an army of the Europeans” -- note the ch

Nov. 22, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] Surge of woman politicians in post-Park Korea

The end of the line for Park Geun-hye, the first and only woman president of South Korea, was feared to have a restraining effect on female politics for some time. Yet, new possibilities are seen for a surge of female politicians, with some new faces drawing the spotlight in the administration and legislature with remarkable individual talent and prowess.Female voices rise in our society amid the increasingly combative atmosphere of the #MeToo movement. Or conversely, women’s growing self-confid

Nov. 21, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] Surge of woman politicians in post-Park Korea

[Leonid Bershidsky] Russia, Japan could finally end WWII

For decades, every sign Russia and Japan had made progress in talks on disputed territories and a post-World War II peace treaty turned out to be a false alarm. This time may be different: Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe need a deal more than their predecessors did.Putin and Abe met in Singapore last week and agreed to speed up talks on a peace treaty their two countries negotiated after World War II but the Soviet Union refused to sign. The talks wil

Nov. 21, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Russia, Japan could finally end WWII

[Keenan Fagan] Is all going well on Korean Peninsula?

These days, all looks to be going well on the Korean Peninsula. Guard posts at the DMZ are being destroyed. Southern delegations and inspectors are going to the North to reopen offices and restore railroads. Gifts of mushrooms and tangerines are being exchanged. Images of the smiling North and South Korean leaders fill the news. Speaking the same language, President Moon vouches to world leaders that Kim Jong-un will keep his word to him and denuclearize, thus ushering in a new period of Korean

Nov. 21, 2018

[Julian Lee] Oil price now controlled by just three men

OPEC has lost what control of the oil market it ever had. The actions (or tweets) of three men -- Presidents Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman -- will determine the course of oil prices in 2019 and beyond. But of course they each want different things.While OPEC struggles to find common purpose, the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia dominate global supply. Together they produce more oil than the 15 members of OPEC. All three are pumping at record rates and each could ra

Nov. 21, 2018

[Trudy Rubin] Will Trump and Xi avoid new Cold War?

The lines of Chinese tourists eager to visit Mao Zedong’s mausoleum in the center of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square start building at 7 a.m., and the wait can be three hours. The tourist shops along one side of the square are filled with glossy pendants that feature Mao on one side and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the other.Those pendants are fixed in my mind on my return from my latest trip to China, as the clock ticks down to a critical meeting between Xi and President Trump at the Group of 20

Nov. 21, 2018

[Robert J. Fouser] After the US midterm elections

The results of the recent midterm elections in the US were as predicted. Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives, and Republicans retained control over the Senate. Democrats did slightly better than expected in the House of Representatives, but Republicans did slightly better in the Senate. The election fit closely with the historical pattern of the party of the incumbent president losing seats but fell short of being a wave election that gave control of both houses of Congr

Nov. 20, 2018

[Robert J. Fouser] After the US midterm elections

[Andrew Polk] Why stimulus isn’t working in China

China’s vaunted economic managers aren’t infallible -- and they’re currently making a familiar mistake. They are trying to accomplish too many objectives simultaneously, many of which conflict with each other. Instead of engineering a recovery, the resulting confused policy mix is only feeding a growing feeling of uncertainty among Chinese markets, businesses and households. That will continue to depress growth in China -- and the global economy -- in 2019. To be sure, Chinese leaders deserve so

Nov. 20, 2018

[Mihir Sharma] India can’t keep dodging trade deals

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, is not a “competitor” to the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- or, as it’s now known after adding the adjectives “comprehensive” and “progressive,” the CPTPP. Yes, the CPTPP very obviously excludes the People’s Republic of China while the RCEP does not. But, unlike the former, the RCEP is a more traditional sort of trade deal, in which tariff cuts on tradeable goods -- rather than high standards for labor, environmental and intellectual-proper

Nov. 20, 2018

[Hal Brands] Environment and economy have become great-power pawns

In recent years, we have seen the renewal of a phenomenon that seemed to have passed into history with the end of the Cold War: fierce and potentially violent competition between the most powerful countries on the globe. Yet as dangerous as that competition is in its own right, it is also worsening prospects for solving many of the world’s other problems, from migration to economic crises to climate change.Relations between the great powers -- the US and its allies on the one hand, and revisioni

Nov. 20, 2018

[Kim Seong-kon] Two inscrutable things in Korea for foreigners

Famous American poet William Carlos Williams was a pediatrician, so he thought of poetry as spiritual medicine that healed wounded souls. Interestingly enough, his contemporary, poet Wallace Stevens, was a lawyer, so he thought of poetry as a quest for the order of the universe. Another American poet, T.S. Eliot, was a banker who regarded poetry as spiritual wealth and treasure. Recently, one of my Spanish friends asked me, “In Korea, how could musicians hold a picket, demanding severer punishme

Nov. 20, 2018

[Kim Seong-kon] Two inscrutable things in Korea for foreigners

[Adam Minter] China’s rules on genes are too tight

China caused consternation in the tech world by walling off its internet, blocking foreign cloud-computing firms and forcing companies to store data locally if they want to operate on the mainland: Many fear a full-fledged balkanization of the internet. The worry now is that something similar may be happening in cutting-edge gene research.Late last month, in a move that’s largely been overlooked outside the scientific community, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology announced it had sanctio

Nov. 19, 2018

[Adam Minter] China’s rules on genes are too tight

[Trudy Rubin] China’s future weapon vs. America: Its growing middle class

They shop in malls and high-end supermarkets, buy condos by the seaside, attend wine tastings, vacation abroad, and push their kids to apply to Harvard. But they aren’t American suburbanites; they are China’s huge and growing urban middle class, which Beijing hopes will eventually consume enough to lower the country’s dependence on exports.Whatever the outcome of the US-China trade war -- and any tete-a-tete between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping at the upcoming G-20 meeting in Argentina -- Chi

Nov. 19, 2018

[Trudy Rubin] China’s future weapon vs. America: Its growing middle class

[Pankaj Mishra] Can Malaysia save democracy?

Political revolts around the world have targeted what are widely seen as corrupt and unaccountable political and business elite -- the elite that pursue their own interests globally at the expense of ordinary citizens and regulatory regimes in nation-states. The result has often been the elevation of demagogues stoking xenophobic passions against not only the elite, but minorities and immigrants. Yet one case -- Malaysia -- shows that demagoguery doesn’t have to be the inevitable consequence of

Nov. 19, 2018

[Anne O. Krueger] Trump’s protectionist quagmire

After World War II, the United States led the world in reducing protectionist barriers and establishing an open, rules-based trade system. That effort resulted in a half-century of the most rapid economic growth in human history. But US President Donald Trump’s administration is now reversing that progress. The protectionism that Trump has unleashed is contagious and will likely spread well beyond the industries that he wants to insulate from foreign competition.Consider imported steel, which th

Nov. 19, 2018